Magnolia Square (7 page)

‘I think I’d rather like a bouquet of Canary Bird,’ Kate said, aware that verbal response to her unwanted visitor was long overdue. ‘It would be both pretty and
unusual.’

Hettie sniffed. Flowers from a bomb-site weren’t her idea of wedding flowers, even if they were roses. Next thing she knew, Kate would be asking her to arrange stepmother blossom and
rose-bay willow-herb all the way down the aisle!

‘The kettle is boiling,’ Christina said, as steam began to puff upwards.

Hettie sniffed again. She didn’t need a foreigner to tell her when a kettle was boiling. Pointedly leaving it for another few seconds she poured milk into the cups. She’d never
overly taken to Christina. Other people had suffered in the war, as well as the Jews. What about Constance Giles, the Vicar’s wife? A nicer lady had never lived. She’d never had a bad
word for anyone. Never hurt a fly. It was typical that, when she’d been blasted to kingdom come in the first air-raid of the war, she’d been making a visit to one of her husband’s
sick parishioners.

Using a kettle-holder Kate had made years ago, when she had been a Girl Guide, she poured some boiling water into the teapot, swirled it round and poured it out and then spooned tea into the
warmed pot. To her mind, Christina was a hard little piece, and she didn’t know what Jack Robson saw in her. He’d have been better off marrying a south-London girl. He’d have
known where he stood then. She poured boiling water on to the tea-leaves. She and Daniel only had one son, Danny, and he, thank goodness, had had the good sense to marry a proper south-London girl.
Everyone knew where they were with Carrie. She was always bright and cheery and straight as a die. Whereas Christina . . . Her mouth tightened as she waited for the tea to brew. In her opinion,
Jack Robson would never know where he stood with Christina. Still waters ran deep, and there were none stiller than Christina.

‘One sugar or two?’ she said to her now, miffed that she had been cheated of her heart-to-heart with Kate, adding acerbically, ‘Or have you given it up to help the Jenningses
with their rationing?’

‘And now the war is over, you’ll never go away again?’ Matthew was asking Leon anxiously as they squelched over the mud flats below Greenwich.

‘No,’ Leon said, holding on to Luke’s chubby hands as he straddled his neck.

Luke. He still couldn’t get over the wonderment of his son. Or the name Kate had given him. It wasn’t a very West Indian name. It wasn’t even a very common English name, or at
least it wasn’t common in south London. He grinned to himself. First Matthew. Now Luke. If they had another two sons would Kate insist on christening them Mark and John?

‘And we’ll be a proper family now, won’t we?’ Daisy said, walking as close to him as was humanly possible. ‘We’ll be just like other people, won’t
we?’

‘We’re going to be a grand family,’ Leon said, flashing her his sunlit smile. Though she was still only seven, Daisy remembered him from when he had been home on his last
leave; the leave Luke had been conceived. Matthew had been only a baby then. Matthew had no memories of him, though it was hard to believe from the proprietorial way he dogged his every step.

‘Want to throw stones,’ Luke announced. ‘Want to throw stones in the river.’

Leon swung him down from his shoulders, and Luke’s wellington boots made a satisfyingly squelchy sound as they made contact with the mud.

‘We’re going to look for treasure,’ Matthew said, speaking for Daisy as well as himself. ‘Pirate ships used to anchor here and there’s
lots
of buried
treasure!’

A paddle-steamer on the way to Southend trawled downriver, its wash causing small waves to ripple outwards towards the banks. Luke screamed with delight as his wellingtons received a soaking.
Daisy and Matthew hastily scampered out of range. Leon watched his little tribe indulgently. All kids loved playing about near the water’s edge. His own childhood had been spent further down
the river, at Chatham, and he had spent many happy hours searching for plunder amongst the flotsam and jetsam swept up by the tide.

Very few people ever believed him when he told them he hadn’t only lived in Chatham as a child, but had been born there. ‘Don’t be daft,’ even his closest friends had
said, ‘’ow could you ’ave bin, when you’re a darkie? Yer must ’ave bin born in Africa. Darkies come from Africa.’ That had been before the war, of course; before
black American servicemen stationed in England had startled, and often shocked, the local populace.

‘My father came from Barbados,’ he had said patiently, time and time again. ‘My mother was English. Kent born and bred.’ It had never made any difference. His skin was
dark and Darkie had become his nickname, and no-one ever believed he was as British as they were.

‘We’ve found some money!’ Matthew shouted gleefully. ‘A threepenny-bit. And Daisy’s found a mouth-organ. It doesn’t work, but it might do when it’s
dried out!’

A seaman on a tug ploughing up river recognized Leon’s naval jersey and gave him a friendly wave. Leon waved back. He’d met with very little racial prejudice at sea, thank goodness,
and ever since he had saved young Billy Lomax from being injured or killed in a runaway lorry, he had met with none at all in Magnolia Square. What he would do when he met with it in his
children’s presence, he didn’t yet know. It was an ugliness he didn’t want any of them exposed to, and yet they
would
be exposed to it, it was impossible they
wouldn’t be. And they would be exposed to it directly, as well as on his behalf.

For Luke, it would come in a different form to the remarks Matthew and Daisy would have to contend with. For all three of them it would be difficult. And somehow, he and Kate had to prepare them
for the jokes that would hurt, the jibes that would be meant to hurt.

‘Can we spend the threepenny-bit at Mr Jennings’s fruit stall, Daddy-Leon?’ Matthew asked, looking up at him, his little face shining with happiness. ‘Can we have a
picnic on the Heath?’

‘Of course we can,’ he ruffled Matthew’s blond hair lovingly, ‘and I’ll tell you what else we can do. We can go to the pond at the top end of the village and see if
anyone is sailing boats. And tonight I’ll start building you a boat of your own. A boat with sails and masts and a flag.’

‘Miss Radcynska is a displaced person,’ Bob Giles said a few days later to his two churchwardens. ‘The Church of England charity seeking to help victims of
the war have asked me if a home can be provided for her in St Mark’s parish.’ He paused, toying with a pencil on his desk, wondering just how to continue. Did he tell Daniel Collins and
Wilfred Sharkey all he knew of Miss Radcynska’s history, or would doing so be counterproductive? He looked across his cluttered desk at them both: Daniel, stolid and dependable and with a
heart as big as Asia; Wilfred, austere, ascetic, and with rigid convictions no force on earth could sway. ‘Miss Radcynska has suffered greatly,’ he continued, choosing his words with
care, deciding not to disclose for the moment just how stupefyingly horrific Anna Radcynska’s suffering had been – and still was. ‘She isn’t well enough to live a completely
independent life . . . and this gives rise to difficulties.’

Daniel waited patiently for the difficulties to be explained. When they were, whatever they were, he would set his mind to overcoming them. Wilfred frowned. He didn’t like difficulties.
They upset the tenor of a well-organized existence, and a well-organized existence was an existence that was centred in Christ.

‘As I’m a widower, it isn’t possible for Miss Radcynska to move temporarily into the vicarage,’ Bob Giles continued, a shadow darkening his eyes as it always did whenever
he spoke of the loss of his wife, however obliquely. ‘But number eight is church property, and the bombed-out East End family we rehoused in the lower half of the house are moving out and
moving back to the other side of the water.’ Though he wasn’t London-born and bred, Bob Giles had lived so long in south London that he spoke of the Thames as his friends and neighbours
did, as if it were a cultural divide there was no overcoming.

‘Then there’s no problem,’ Daniel said cheerily. ‘With the Tillotsons living above her and Wilfred and his family living next door to her, Miss Radcynska will be as snug
as a bug in a rug.’

Wilfred cleared his throat. It was all very well for Daniel to be so magnanimous. He wasn’t the one who would be living next door to Miss whatever-her-name-was. ‘Perhaps we
shouldn’t be too hasty,’ he said, an air of condescension in his voice. Daniel was a boiler-maker and Wilfred, a draughtsman, felt by far his social superior. ‘There are, after
all, lots of
British
-born homeless people who would be only too happy to tenant number eight. How do we know how the Tillotsons will feel about Miss . . . Miss . . .’ rather than risk
mispronouncing the name he didn’t attempt it, ‘about a foreigner moving in beneath them? How do we know that the young woman in question can speak English?’

‘As far as the Tillotsons are concerned, there isn’t an immediate problem,’ Bob Giles said, disappointed, as, always, by Wilfred’s ungenerous spirit. ‘It could well
be the beginning of next year before Major Tillotson is demobbed, and Mrs Tillotson is, as you know, in Scotland with her mother. As to your other question, Wilfred, the answer is, I’m
afraid, that I don’t know.’

‘Well, if she can’t speak English, all the more reason why she should be living among people who will only be too happy to help her learn it,’ Daniel said, impatient at such
nit-picking. ‘Christina’s as much at home now in south London as if she’d been born here, and Miss Radcynska soon will be as well.’

‘Let’s hope so, Daniel,’ Bob Giles said, speedily taking the matter as having been settled. ‘And now I think we’d better be heading over to the church. I’ve a
wedding to conduct in twenty minutes unless I’m very much mistaken.’

‘Weddings!’ Hettie Collins said to Miriam, as they sat in one of the right-hand pews. ‘This one’s all right, but what Harriet Godfrey thinks she’s
doing, marrying for the first time at her age, I don’t know. You’d think an educated woman like her would have something better to do with her time. As for the Vicar . . .’ The
bunch of imitation cherries on the plum straw hat, which replaced her workaday black one, wobbled with the force of her indignation. ‘You’d think if he was going to marry again,
he’d at least have married someone near his dead wife’s age, not a young woman still in her twenties. He could have married a widow. There’s plenty of ’em about these days,
poor devils.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Miriam said sagely, nodding a head of iron-grey hair, for once not encased in hair curlers. ‘It’s almost as if he’s
’appy
to be
marryin’ again. I wouldn’t want my Albert to be ’appy to be marryin’ again. I’d be revolvin’ in my grave at the very thought!’

‘And I thought Kate said she was only ’avin’ a small weddin’.’ Hettie continued, looking around the nearly full church. ‘There couldn’t be more people
in ’ere if she’d invited all of Lewisham!’

‘They’ve not all been invited,’ Miriam said knowledgably. ‘Word’s spread and they’re just noseyin’.’

‘Well, I ’spect they’ve somethin’ to nosey at,’ Hettie conceded, her eyes on the groom.

In his naval uniform, and in the stark white and polished wood interior of St Mark’s, Leon didn’t look merely chocolate-coloured. He looked as black as the ace of spades.

‘They’ll do all right together,’ Miriam said generously, knowing exactly what it was that Hettie, with unusual tact, hadn’t put into words. ‘An’ it
isn’t as if ’er mother’s alive to be upset, is it?’

Hettie grunted agreement, grateful that she hadn’t any daughters who could run off marrying black sailors. She folded her arms across her matronly chest, saying in a voice that settled the
matter, ‘What’s she going to wear though? She can’t very well wear white, can she? Not with two of her nippers in the front pew. Your Carrie looked lovely in her wedding dress
when she married our Danny. Say what you like, you can’t beat a white wedding. Is that Doris Sharkey over there? Why has she got her hat pulled half over her face? She looks as if she’s
attending a funeral, not a blooming wedding!’

‘You look beautiful,
Liebling,’
Carl Voigt said to Kate, a lump in his throat. ‘Your mother would have been so proud of you!’

Kate looked towards the mantel where a photograph of her mother had stood for sixteen years, ever since her untimely death. From the silver frame loving, laughing eyes met hers. Would her mother
have been proud of her? She hoped so. She hoped so with all her heart. There had been times, when first Matthew had been born illegitimately and then Luke had followed him, that she had often
wondered what her mother’s reaction to their births would have been. She stood silently for a few moments, the blue silk dress she had made with Carrie’s help falling sleekly to her
ankles, her eyes moving from her mother’s photograph to the photograph standing next to it.

Toby had been twenty-three when the photograph was taken. In a fleece-lined RAF flying jacket, he stood nonchalantly beside his Spitfire, a lock of Nordic-blond hair falling low across his
forehead. Two weeks after the photograph was taken he had been killed, piloting his Spitfire over the Dunkirk beaches, engaging in battle with the Heinkels and Messerschmitts strafing the
retreating British Army.